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Percy vi. 216). He took no part in any plots against the government. An attempt to make him out to be a delinquent failed; but the demand that Wressell Castle should be made untenable, and the consequences of a loan raised by the parliament, for which he had become engaged, gave him some vexation (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649–50, p. 286; ''Hist. MSS. Comm''. 3rd Rep. pp. 87–8). He refused to sit either in Cromwell's House of Lords or in that summoned by his son in 1659. To Richard's invitation he is said to have replied that, ‘till the government was such as his predecessors have served under, he could not in honour do it; but, that granted, he should see his willingness to serve him with his life and fortune’ (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 432). He looked forward to the restoration of the House of Lords as a necessary part of the settlement of the nation, but deprecated any premature attempt on the part of the lords themselves to reclaim their rights. On 5 March 1660 he wrote to the Earl of Manchester, referring to the recent attempt made by some of the lords to persuade Monck to allow them to sit, and urging its unseasonableness (, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, i. 395). An unconditional restoration he did not desire, and was one of the heads of the little cabal which proposed that merely those peers who had sat in 1648 should be permitted to take their places in the upper house, and that these should impose on Charles II the conditions offered to his father at the Newport treaty (, Sydney Papers, ii. 685; Clarendon State Papers, iii. 729). In the Convention parliament which met in April 1660 he supported a general act of indemnity, and was heard to say that, ‘though he had no part in the death of the king, he was against questioning those who had been concerned in that affair; that the example might be more useful to posterity and profitable to future kings, by deterring them from the like exorbitances’ (, Memoirs, 267, ed. 1894).

Though the policy which Northumberland had pursued must have been extremely distasteful both to the king and to his ministers, he was sworn in as a privy councillor immediately after the king's return (31 May 1660) (, Sydney Papers, p. 158). He was appointed lord lieutenant of Sussex (11 Aug. 1660) and joint lord lieutenant of Northumberland (7 Sept. 1660), and acted as lord high constable at the coronation of Charles II (18–23 April 1661). But he exercised no influence over the policy of the king, and took henceforth no part in public affairs. He died on 13 Oct. 1668, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and was buried at Petworth.

Clarendon terms Northumberland ‘the proudest man alive,’ and adds that ‘if he had thought the king as much above him as he thought himself above other considerable men, he would have been a good subject.’ ‘He was in all his deportment a very great man,’ and throughout his political career he behaved with a dignity and independence more characteristic of a feudal potentate than a seventeenth-century nobleman. Without possessing great abilities, he enjoyed as much reputation and influence as if he had done so. ‘Though his notions were not large or deep, yet his temper and reservedness in discourse, and his unrashness in speaking, got him the reputation of an able and a wise man; which he made evident in his excellent government of his family, where no man was more absolutely obeyed; and no man had ever fewer idle words to answer for; and in debates of importance he always expressed himself very pertinently’ (Rebellion, vi. 398, viii. 244). At the commencement of the civil war he had ‘the most esteemed and unblemished reputation, in court and country, of any person of his rank throughout the kingdom.’ At the close of the struggle he preserved it almost unimpaired. ‘In spite of all the partial disadvantages which were brought upon him by living in such a divided age, yet there was no man perhaps of any party but believed, honoured, and would have trusted him. Neither was this due to any chance of his birth, but, as all lasting reputation is, to those qualities which ran through the frame of his mind and the course of his life’ (Sir William Temple to Josceline, eleventh earl of Northumberland, 26 Dec. 1668;, ii. 475).

Northumberland married twice: first, in January 1629, Lady Anne Cecil, eldest daughter of William, second earl of Salisbury. This match was strongly disapproved by the bridegroom's father, who attributed his wrongs to the jealousy of the first Earl of Salisbury, and declared that the blood of Percy would not mix with the blood of Cecil if you poured it in a dish’ (, ii. 370). She died on 6 Dec. 1637, and was buried at Petworth (Strafford Letters, ii. 142). By her Northumberland had issue five daughters, three of whom—Catharine, Dorothy, and Lucy—died in childhood; Lady Anne Percy, born on 12 Aug. 1633, married, on 21 June 1652, Philip, lord Stanhope, and died on 29 Nov. 1654; Lady Elizabeth Percy, born on 1 Dec. 1636, married, on 19 May 1653, Arthur, lord Capel (created Earl of Essex in 1661), and died on